Bras in Space – Boobs in Government – Presumptions and Surprises

Playtex took bra-smarts and created workable astronaut suits – an example of perspective determining outcome. While the military-type contractors made prototype rigid suits of moon-armor, the BODY DRESSERS understood the challenge was to engineer fabric to support and protect a moving person in a hostile environment.

Gender dynamics push and pull the story forward. Why is it surprising that seamstresses held the answer to the precision construction of space uniforms? Why is it not surprising that Playtex didn’t play Uncle Sam’s Procurement Roulette very well? The astro-military complex needed something more organic than their unyielding smash and crash protection; they needed to enfold the astronaut’s body layer by layer weaving strength from disparate pieces.

There were men at Playtex, this isn’t a Jack v. Jill story; it is about presumptions and surprises. Most important is the notion of fair evaluation of the competing products and ideas, of the actuality, no matter who created it. The demonstrable fact was Playtex had the expertise and the workforce to tailor safety suits for outer space, and the bureaucrats were smart enough to (eventually) accept that.

The tug of war over gender dominance is a male theory, as if it was axiomatic that competition exists between men and women. That’s a man thing. Women see it more as teaming, us against whoever is against us. Women don’t have illusions about what male domination means: assault, rape, and murder. Check the stats on who is harming and who is harmed. No effective leader-class dismisses the contribution of half its population, so whatever design flaws in the male-model world result in pollution, crime, and slavery cannot be separated from their flagship belief they are “masters”. Women are not blameless, but we’ve never been in charge.

Feminism is not the answer, not if it merely reverses the polarity of judgment. The genders are complementary by design. We are not the same, but we are equal. That’s a premise in my books.

FAMILY: Love v. Money examines the emotional foundations of two female narrators. It’s a two-for-one book with Baby Girl Battersea telling the story of a fatherless heir to a family fortune in the hands of her selfish uncle. You, Drive North puts us in the driver’s seat of an accountant’s hijacked car as she tries to figure out what makes this intruder tick and how fast he is ticking.

Woven into these stories is the impact of being female, the intrinsic plus-minus of gender presumption set against the family-social background. Neither story is a strident call for change; the observations articulate the tilt of being born female.

“There certainly is one way women are superior to men.
They are better at being women.”

I like men, it is obvious in my writing; I married one; I raised one. I appreciate and applaud them as individuals. I’m not distracted by their pretensions of ascension as a group over women as a group. One on one we’re even. Each of us is given unique parts of the human whole: we laugh, we weep, we dance, we sleep. That’s the underlying discord for me: that a seemingly sane person thinks the presence of his twig and berries specifically confers… intelligence, bravery, worthiness… beyond my own second-sex aspirations. As a matter of fact. No. If men en masse embodied the acumen to actually run the show, they would make a world of balance and beauty to survive and thrive. Theories of communism and humanism speak to our shared souls; practicalities of capitalism and territoriality overstuff the greedy.

The focus of males on male dominance is an entitlement mentality that undercuts the true power they have to lead and mold their own lives with allies of all sorts. Instead, they follow the baying of the brethren who they trust beyond reason to lord over lesser beings: females, children, weaker men, animals, crops, the land itself. Even Space is a man’s world (so say the men).

We can abandon the male supremacy argument because in the race to quantify their superiority they muddied the water and polluted the air which is not a high-side outcome. Given the percentage of children living in poverty versus percentage of politicians not living in poverty it is fair to say that men take care of themselves before their children which is tribal self-defeat. Not all of them but enough of them disrespect their mates and disregard their offspring to use their selfishness as a meaningful character marker. They abuse their mates with misdirected aggression (sorry, doll, bad day at the office), rising specifically from their hunger for “presence”. They have to noticed, to be accommodated, to be obeyed, to be feared, they believe it is their right and therein lies the danger.

Luckily, women aren’t asking men to change the shape of their pelvises or give up team sports… simply cut back on the chest-thumping and dick-waving. We get it. You have an immature need to pronounce yourselves better than us. Go ahead. It doesn’t make it true and in a way it proves it false.